Karachi teeters, yearns for ownership
The writer is a senior journalist and analyst
Karachi, my Pride of Place, is in a shambles. Once prided as the 'city of lights' and a cathedral of arts, culture and education, today this metropolitan of around 30 million people, a prospective economic powerhouse, is in ruins and has been ripped off its glory and magnanimity. Its infrastructure is dilapidated; civic amenities, now incurred by its inhabitants at an exorbitant cost, have gone for a toss; and the once proudly mentionable norms and ethos are nowhere.
The city is bulging and exploding. It is literally unplanned, and the claim of it being a town properly laid-out by the colonials is a myth today. Thanks to 'China-cutting', an arbitrary and illogical truncation of land, even over sewerages and amenity plots, Karachi is rapidly turning into a ghetto. As part of modernisation, it is witnessing a stampede of high-rises, pinned on a poor architecture sans parking and safety exits.
It is polluting; possesses severe environmental hazards with solid-waste choked in drainages; awaiting monsoon rains to expose its fault-lines; and has to deal with an inadequate infrastructure, such as parks and playgrounds, and a sizzling healthcare system. Millions of students, from primary to secondary, have no alternative but to rely on fleecing, quality-less schools, and a higher education with an extortionate price-tag.
The metropolis does not have a public transport system et al, and the world's 12th largest city is devoid of a formal taxi network too. Millions either commute on junked four-wheelers that fleece them to the core, or haplessly hop on Chingchi (a mocked version of auto-rickshaw). Not to ever dream of a Metro or Circular Railway!
The conurbation with an area of 3,780 sq-km is encircled with cantonments (garrisons), and its dwellers hardly have a say in their affairs. Karachi, unlike any other world mega city, does not have a police of its own and the law-enforcement is at the mercy of federal and provincial maneuverings with least regard for its citizens. Not to mention mafias, drug-traffickers, criminal gangs and political masqueraders who rule it at impunity.
Pakistan's largest urban centre grapples with water shortage with private hydrants under the paramilitary and their cahoots minting billions; an electricity cobweb that is rusted and lethal, piling pilferage on its consumers; and a local tax and levies collection machinery that is corrupt and devoid of any accountability.
It is no surprise that millions of Karachiites are in a miserable fate. Many more are in depression owing to an unending socioeconomic pushback they have to face to stay afloat. A city that generates an average of 65% of national revenue has mysteriously nothing to share with its genuine dwellers. It is a pity that Karachi lacks a local government too, and the obliterated and politically-leech Karachi Metropolitan Corporation is not even privy to collection of property taxes under its nose.
None own the city, neither the people nor the political elite, as they all are on their own waywardly scrambling in a parasitic manner. Less said the better about governance and the Mahishmati Raj (a phrase derived from ancient Haihayas kingdom) which ensures that its subjects are in tatters under a perpetual despotic rule.
It is, thus, no surprise if the Economist Intelligence Unit has ranked Karachi as the fourth least livable city in the world. Its Livability Index, 2025 has simply mirrored as to where the municipality, its aristocracy and residents stand in the comity of nations. The city is a manifest of ad hocism that has evolved into an amoebic demographic-cum-economic denominator, and is mysteriously alive and kicking.
Though the city is glittering at face value and is home to some greatest philanthropy, it is teetering underneath. Its folk are in disgust and pain. Karachi is in need of a genuine political mandate, not the one tampered at midnight, or agreed on a hybrid equation. All it desires is ownership by its natives and its due share from the national mainstream. It is in an existential crisis and the city must be rescued.